Family background, informal networks and the decision to provide for old age:

A siblings approach

Bettina Lamla1

This version: August 2012

Abstract

In order to encourage people to take out voluntary private pensions to supplement decreasing

statutory provisions Germany introduced the so-called Riester pensions. The complex design of

the new product might have created entry barriers into the market helping to explain the slow

adaption path in the eligible population until today. Existing empirical evidence has not properly

taken into account the search and decision costs related to Riester pensions. I use information on

family background in order to account for the predisposed ability to manage relevant information

as well as to capture the impact of information sharing within families. I conclude that parental

erudition as well as experience in financial matters are determinants of their children’s

preferences and ability in financial decision making, however, omission does not seem to lead to

misleading results on other coefficients. Contemporaneous as well as sequential correlations in

Riester ownership between siblings are pronounced. While the former might be due to shared

preferences, I take the latter as evidence for information sharing. Positive externalities help to

overcome entry barriers in the Riester market by dispersing information. The family as a source

of information becomes less important with time as the number of Riester owners in other social

circles grows. Once a critical mass has been reached positive spillovers create a social multiplier

which should result in dynamic demand for Riester contracts. Indeed official statistics exhibit

increasing uptake rates among low income individuals for whom initial entry barriers were

comparably high.

JEL classification: D83, D91

Key words: old age provision, family background, information sharing, transaction costs, Riester

Acknowledgment: I thank Michela Coppola who has given me advice throughout the project.

Moreover, I am grateful to Axel Börsch-Supan, Joachim Winter and Michael Ziegelmeyer for

their helpful comments. I have benefited from comments coming from participants at the MEA

seminar (Munich), the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (Vienna) as well as

the International German Socio-Economic Panel User Conference (Berlin).

1 Munich Center for the Economics of Aging at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Munich.

Email: lamla@mea.mpisoc.mpg.de

1

1. Introduction

Innovations, and in particular innovative financial products, induce transaction costs. These costs

might differ between individuals depending on their ability to acquire and process relevant

information for a purchase decision.

In many western countries people did not have to deal with the market for private old age

provision products until recently as the welfare state was providing generous public pensions.

However, with global demographic change challenging public budgets, most of these countries

undertook dramatic pension reforms in the last years: Monolithic pension systems were reformed

into multi-pillar systems, thereby shifting responsibility for retirement income from the state

towards individuals. Standard economic theory predicts that a change to less generous public

pensions would increase private savings due to a crowding-out effect. Ambiguities in the

relationship between public pension wealth and private savings arise, however, depending on

income and substitution effects, capital market conditions, and behavioral biases (see Feldstein,

1974; Kahneman and Tversky 1979, Thaler 1981).With people being restricted in their ability to

manage information (Delavande et al., 2008; van Rooij et al.,2011) this might result in less than

optimal savings and offset the governments’ policy. Many countries have therefore tried to

actively encourage people to take out voluntary private pensions to supplement decreasing

statutory provisions. As part of the major pension reform, Germany introduced a new type of

state-subsidized private old age provision scheme, the so-called Riester pensions in 2001.

By 2010, almost 10 years after its introduction, 40% of the eligible population was covered by a

Riester contract (Coppola and Reil-Held, 2009; Geyer, 2011). Coverage rates vary across socio-

economic strata revealing that especially low income and low educated individuals are hard to

reach. The ongoing discussion of why certain groups do not provide for old age and how

successful subsidies are in targeting the population at risk of old age poverty has sparked

controversies in the academic world for many years2. Existing evidence, however, has not

properly taken into account the search and decision costs related to Riester pensions. Individuals

might face entry barriers, such as a simple lack in information, when joining the Riester market

and differ in their ability to overcome these barriers. Peers in turn can help eliminating these

barriers as they disperse information and thereby lower transaction costs.

The contribution exploits information on family background in order to account for the

predisposed ability to manage relevant information as well as to capture the importance of

families as a form of social network. In order to reduce omitted variables I control for family

background in two ways: (1) by subtracting a family fixed effect and, (2) through the inclusion of

proxy variables. Beyond shared preferences and genetic components, families can be considered

a source for cost-effective and reliable information. In an attempt to establish the effect of social

interactions I look at the contemporaneous correlations in Riester ownership as well as the

sequence of Riester market entrance between siblings.

2 See e.g. Gale and Scholz (1994) on Individual Retirement Accounts in the U.S.

2

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents some key features of Riester

pensions and contains an overview of the relevant literature. The section ends with stating my

hypotheses. Section 3 describes the identification strategy. Apart from the data and sample used, I

present the model specifications. Section 4 reports the estimation results, and section 5 concludes.

2. Related literature and Hypotheses

2.1. Riester pensions: The key features

As part of the major German pension reform in 2001, Riester pensions were introduced with the

aim of promoting the take-up of supplementary pensions to fill the emerging pension gap.3

Compared to a situation without reforms in 2001 and 2004, the public pension level will be lower

by 14.4% in 2030 (Börsch-Supan and Gasche, 2010). Riester pensions are state-subsidized

private saving plans. In the period between 2002 and 2009 demand for Riester contracts rose,

especially after reforms in 2005, among all income groups. While the share of low-income

households owning a Riester pension is still comparably low, this group shows dynamic demand

measured as a percentage increase in uptake rates (Börsch-Supan et al., 2012).

Riester contracts are rather complex financial products: To start with, the subsidies are bound to

eligibility criteria. Basically everyone who is affected by the decreasing statuary pensions is

eligible for subsidies, yet the concrete eligibility rules are complicated (Börsch-Supan et al.,

2012, p.4). A distinction is made between direct and indirect eligibility. Directly eligible are

employees paying mandatory contributions to social insurance, unemployed and recipients of

other wage compensation benefits, self-employed, farmers as well as civil servants. Indirect

eligibility is derived from eligibility of the spouse. Coppola and Gasche (2011) demonstrate that

especially low-income households are ignorant of their eligibility for subsidies under the Riester

scheme. The authors find that low knowledge of the pension system is correlated with a higher

probability to misreport households’ eligibility for the Riester-subsidies.

In addition, the financial advantages of Riester pension plans are not immediately obvious to

everyone and its quantification requires some mathematical skills (Börsch-Supan et al., 2012).

For certified Riester products subsidies exist in the form of a basic benefit matching the own

contribution and a tax deduction, depending on the amount contributed to the contract and the

marginal tax rate of the owner of the contract. Low income individuals receive a relatively high

subsidy due to the matching basic benefit, higher income individuals profit from the tax

deductions (Börsch-Supan and Gasche, 2010). While subsidies are particularly generous for low

income individuals4, targeting individuals with high risk of old age poverty, there is widespread

misperception of the generosity of the state-subsidy in this group (Coppola and Gasche, 2011). At

3 See Börsch-Supan and Wilke (2004) and Wilke (2009) on the pension reform process in Germany.

4 Subsidies are also relatively high for families with children. Families receive an additional subsidy of 185 euro for

each child. For children born after 2007 the additional benefit amounts to 300 euro.

3

the same time, only those who are aware of incentives can respond to them (Chan and Stevens,

2008).

Given that an individual chooses to buy a contract, he/she might find it difficult to decide which

Riester product to pick. Saving possibilities are diverse with more than 5000 different products

(BzSt, 2011). Moreover, there is an ongoing public debate about the intransparency of costs

related to the contracts. Hagen and Reisch (2010, p.5) point out the nature of Riester contracts as

“trust-goods”, with consumers being unable to evaluate the value of the contract even after the

purchase. In fact, miscounseling or bad products are among the main reasons why Riester

contracts are terminated or decommissioned (Ziegelmeyer and Nick, 2012).

In conclusion, an individual has to manage a series of tasks until he/she can make a purchase

decision: First, one needs to identify the need to provide privately for old age. As many field

studies and laboratory tests show, people are much more short-sighted and much less able to

process economic and financial information than their rational counterparts and thus, might fail to

realize the need to save for retirement (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky 1979, Thaler 1981). Second,

the individual needs to gather information on other relevant pension products as well as Riester

specific information on eligibility and subsidies, which can be hard to grasp. Third, the individual

has to pick one of the offered contracts without knowing which one suits best to his/her personal

circumstances.

More than ten years after its introduction a vast amount of research has been undertaken on the

topic “Riester pensions”.5 The literature on Riester pensions in Germany (e.g. Coppola and Reil-

Held, 2009; Geyer, 2009; Pfarr and Schneider, 2010) has highlighted the following: Riester

ownership is significantly influenced by age and income as well as gender. Moreover, individuals

living in the east of Germany tend to buy Riester contracts more often. The same is true for

individuals with children. Coppola and Reil-Held (2009) add saving motives to their regression

and find that an increased importance of the old-age saving motive or saving due to subsidies is

correlated with a higher probability to own a Riester contract. The authors’ take that as a sign for

the effectiveness of the incentives. Pfarr and Schneider (2010) in turn stress the importance of

complementary products in the form of life insurances which they interpret as an indicator for

crowding-in, also found in Börsch-Supan et al. (2008).

Existing evidence, however, has not properly taken into account the search and decision costs

related to Riester pensions. Given that Riester pensions are rather complex in comparison to other

well-established products present on the market (e.g. life insurance), entry barriers might explain

the observed slow adaption path in the eligible population even ten years after its introduction.

2.2. Riester pensions and the role of families

Parental erudition as well as experience in financial matters and attitude towards saving are

strong determinants of their children’s preferences and ability in financial decision making (e.g.

5 See Blank (2011) for an overview.

4

Lusardi et al., 2010; Ashby et al., 2011). First of all members from one family are more alike than

randomly selected individuals due to a number of reasons, such as a shared environment when

being young resulting in similar role models and peer groups and influencing preferences.

Moreover, many individual characteristics related to financial decisions also have a genetic

component.6 Using a sample of identical and fraternal twins Barnea et al. (2010) decompose

variance in investment decisions. The authors claim that similarities in investment behavior are to

a large extent due to genetic predisposition, even after controlling for a wide range of covariates

and the frequency of interaction.

By now there is broad consensus that financial literacy influences the decision to save for

retirement. Studies of financial literacy7 find that in particular low income and low educated

households as well as women often lack financial literacy and thus, accumulate insufficient

retirement wealth. In a multivariate analysis Bucher-Koenen (2011) adds to the usual socio-

demographic determinants for Riester ownership measures of financial literacy. The regression

results reveal that financial literacy is positively related with any form of private old age

provision. In her conclusion the author points out that there is the possibility of omitted variable

bias due to missing information on, for example, cognitive abilities which in turn are determined

by family background (Becker, 1964).

Lusardi et al. (2010) examine financial literacy among the young and find that financial literacy

is strongly related to socio-demographics and mothers’ education, which is -among other

variables- interpreted as a proxy for family financial sophistication. Mothers’ educational

attainment also proves to be an important determinant for thinking about retirement (Lusardi et

al. 2010; Lusardi, 2003). These studies lack sufficient information on fathers’ educational

attainment. Indeed, Loehlin (2005) finds that across studies the correlations in different

characteristics between mothers and children are on average higher than the correlation between

fathers and their children. However, the still prevalent male breadwinner model in Germany

might make fathers the financial decision maker of the household and, therefore role models in

investment decisions. The fact that men are usually found be financially more literate than

women, might reinforce their position (see Lusardi and Mitchell, 2008). It is a priori not clear

whether the influence of the father exceeds the influence of mothers’ characteristics on Riester

ownership or the other way around. The composition of the parents’ portfolio is a further

indicator for children’s ability to handle financial issues. For instance, Lusardi et al. (2010) show

that young people whose parents have stocks and retirement savings are significantly more likely

to understand financial rationales such as risk diversification reflecting the opportunity of

children to learn from their parents.

Indeed, many studies make peers the main source of financial advice and contributors to financial

decisions (e.g. Brown et al, 2008; Duflo and Saez, 2002). Hong et al. (2004) develop a theoretical

model with two types of investors, non-social and social ones. Non-social and social investors

6 See Barnea et al. (2010) for an overview.

7 See Lusardi and Mitchell (2011) for an overview.

5

face fixed participation costs when entering a market, but for the latter group these costs decrease

when the participation rate among peers is higher. The model predicts a social multiplier effect

due to positive externalities. Empirically the authors show that sociable households who interact

more with neighbors or attend church are more likely to possess stocks. Similar results are

reported in Guiso et al. (2004) who find that households living in high social capital areas,

measured as participation rates in elections and blood donation, tend to invest more in stocks.

Using a sample of young Americans, Lusardi et al. (2010) reveal significant relations between

peer characteristics and financial literacy.

The main identification problem in such studies is that households are not randomly assigned to

peer groups. Sorting and matching is endogenous (Li, 2009). Manski (1993) demonstrates

formally the considerations involved in identifying peer effects: First, group members share a

common social environment. Second, people with similar preferences are members of the same

group. In order to overcome the endogeneity problem, Duflo and Saez (2003) analyze a

randomized experiment. They study the role of peer effects in TDA (Tax Deferred Accounts)

plan participation using data on employees at a university. The experiment encouraged randomly

selected employees of certain departments to attend an information fair which promised rewards

for attendance. The authors show that the effect on enrollment rates in TDA plans was similar

between treated and untreated department a few months after the fair, which they take as

evidence for social networks dispersing information.

Without a credible instrument or experiment at hand, an alternative solution to overcome the

endogeneity problem is to study families given that they are “connected for a purely exogenous

reason”, namely biology (Li et al., 2009, p.5). Prior work has shown that family and friends are

of particular importance when it comes to financial advice. Especially in low social capital areas,

narrow subgroups such families are considered a valuable source for information (see Guiso et

al., 2004 and references therein). Lusardi (2003) uses a sample restricted to 50-61 year old

Americans. She reports that individuals learn to plan for retirement from older siblings and from

the experience of old parents. In her descriptive analysis she shows that respondents who do not

think about retirement are less likely to have older siblings that could provide advice on

preparation for retirement. Moreover, she uses the age difference to the oldest sibling as an

instrument for planning in a savings regression. The author claims that this should capture

“search and psychological costs of planning” (Lusardi, 2003, p.8). If the older sibling can give

guidance due to his/her own experience that can be considered a straightforward form of

planning. Given the public debate on the intransparency of the cost structure of Riester contracts

(Hagen and Reisch, 2010), reliable information form a trusted person outside the offering

institution, such as a sibling, might be of particular importance in overcoming entry barriers.

Provided that someone within the family has entered the Riester market, he/she can disperse

knowledge on eligibility and other related questions and thereby lower entry costs. Therefore, I

expect strong and positive correlations between Riester ownership of family members going

beyond shared preferences.

6

However, shared preferences cannot be disentangled from positive externalities due to

information sharing when looking at contemporaneous correlations only. Li (2009, p.5) claims

that families are tied by exogenous biological relationships unlike households who are formed

through e.g. marriage. However, there are possible scenarios in which investment decisions

within families are coordinated. For instance, when parents buy a Riester pension they might give

uniform advice to all of their children and children might want to mimic their parents.

In an attempt to solve the endogeneity problem when establishing the effect of social interactions,

Li (2009) looks at the sequence of stock market entrance. He finds that the likelihood of entering

the stock market within the next five years is higher if the respondents’ parents or children had

entered the stock market during the previous five years. The author argues that these findings

highlight the importance of information sharing: Stockmarket knowledge and experience

acquired by family members in the past is assumed to influence ones’ own participation decision.

Following this approach I expect not only contemporaneous, but also sequential correlations to be

pronounced. The likelihood of a family member entering the Riester market should be higher if

someone within the family has bought a Riester contract in the previous period, other things held

constant.

If positive externalities exist that might create a social multiplier once a critical mass has been

reached (Becker and Murphy, 2000; Glaeser et al., 2003). In that case public policy will have a

direct effect on individuals and an indirect effect through social interaction, leading to dynamic

demand for Riester contracts and a better future coverage with private pensions in the population.

The family as a source of information should become less important as soon as the group of

Riester owners in the population is large enough and information on eligibility and subsidies is

widely dispersed.

Summing up, I claim that (1) family background is strongly correlated with search and decision

costs therefore needs to be considered when assessing the determinants of Riester ownership. (2)

Contemporaneous and sequential correlations in Riester ownership are pronounced among family

members, even after controlling for other factors. While the former might be due to shared

preferences, the latter should result from information sharing. And, (3) as information on

eligibility criteria and subsidies are widely dispersed in the general population information

sharing within the family should become a less important determinant for Riester ownership.

3. Identification strategy

3.1. Data and sample

The Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) is an annually conducted, representative household

panel study starting in 1984.8 The SOEP provides information on all household members who

8 See Wagner, Frick and Schupp (2007) and Haisken-DeNew and Frick (2005) for a detailed description of the

GSOEP.

7

reach the age of 17. Its structure is very similar to the American Panel Study of Income

Dynamics (PSID) with an individual questionnaire for all household members containing

questions about e.g. education, occupation and earnings and a complementing biography

questionnaire which covers information on the life course (e.g. marital history, social

background, employment biography etc.). In addition, there is a questionnaire answered by only

one person with questions on the situation of the household as a unit. A question on Riester

ownership was part of the individual questionnaire in the years 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010. The

wording is as follows: “Did you subscribe a Riester contract since 31st December 2001?”.

The SOEP traces members of original sample households, i.e. persons leaving original sample

households form new households, consisting of grown children and separated spouses. 9 These

newly formed households are added to the SOEP population, including all non-original sample

household members. Due to this feature I am able to construct a sample consisting of siblings,

defined as persons having the same biological mother, including half-siblings. They are matched

using her never-changing identification number. Information on the father is associated with each

sibling also using his identification number. In principle, even richer family relationships could

be established by matching grandparents and own children. However, this would result in a rather

small sample size.

In summary, individuals who have at least one sibling in the SOEP and whose mother is already

part of the SOEP population are considered in the sample.10

As pointed out in section 2, in order

to be eligible for subsidies certain criteria have to be fulfilled.11

Because all persons in a

household answer the individual questionnaire, I am also able to account for eligibility of the

spouse which in turn leads to indirect eligibility for the individual under observation. The

analysis is restricted to individuals with German nationality as foreigners might have a limited

opportunity to learn from their relatives on public and private old age provision in Germany. For

the first part of my analysis I need a cross section and use wave 2010, that is the latest publically

available wave. Later on, when looking at sequential correlations I exploit the longitudinal

character of SOEP and use waves 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2010. The final sample size accounts to

1228 siblings in year 2010.

While the special tracing rules in combination with the length of the panel allow the construction

of such a complex sample, attrition is a potential weakness.12

If only certain siblings remain part

of the SOEP after moving out from their parents, the sample will suffer from sample selection

bias. Because the sample requires the observation of at least two siblings as adults this adds to the

scope of the attrition problem (Fitzgerald, 2011). However, comparing original sample members

9 See Schonlau et al. (2010) for a discussion on tracing rules.

10 Data was extracted using PanelWhiz (Haisken-DeNew and Hahn, 2010).

11 Eligible are all individuals where at least one spouse is an employee subject to social security contributions, pays

voluntary social security contributions, is a civil servant or unemployed. 12

See Kroh (2011) for an analysis of attrition in the SOEP.

8

and their descendants, Spiess et al. (2008) find no evidence that one group is more volatile in

participation behaviour than the other.

Fitzgerald et al. (1998) find that intergenerational correlations in earnings, education and welfare

participation are slightly stronger for a subsample of children who did not drop out from the

PSID and whose parents were already part of the PSID sample. If family ties are especially strong

in samples of second generation respondents and the finding can be conferred to the SOEP this

would imply that the inter-generational as well as intra-generational correlations found in my

results should be understood as an upper bound.

Descriptive statistics in Table 1 reveal that the coverage with Riester contracts is lower than

reported by official statistics. This should be ascribed to the rather low average age, resulting

from the construction of the sample. Given that the individuals are rather young the influence of

parents on their children should be pronounced. The average network size is 2.4 siblings with a

maximum of 7 adult siblings under observation in 2010, reflecting the extent of possible social

interaction. In comparison to the overall SOEP population the parents of the siblings sample are

on the average better educated, especially the mothers.13

13

Descriptive statistics comparing the two samples are available upon request from the author.

9

3.2. Model specifications

In this paper, I focus on the use of family information in order to assess the determinants of

Riester ownership. I estimate a series of logistic and complementary loglog regressions14

,

modeling the likelihood of having a Riester contract.

For reasons of comparison a baseline model is estimated first. The dependent binary variable

indicates whether the individual owns a Riester contract. As explanatory variables, captured

under X, I include socio-economic characteristics that are usually found to be significantly

correlated with the ownership of private pensions and in particular with Riester contracts. These

controls contain a dummy indicating the gender and whether the household is located in East

Germany, age as well as age squared. The educational attainment of the respondent is included

14

See Wooldrige (2002) for logistic regressions and Jenkins (2005) for cloglog regressions.

Variable Mean

Riester 32.7

male 52.8

age 29.8

east 23.4

Hauptschule 22.4

Realschule 33.8

Abitur 32.8

post secondary degree 22.3

married 28.7

child under 16 in HH 31.8

HH net income 2856.2

mother: Hauptschule 50.0

mother: Realschule 38.6

mother: Abitur 11.2

father: Hauptschule 55.1

father: Realschule 29.1

father: Abitur 15.6

father: vocational degree 70.7

father: university degree 16.8

mother: vocational degree 64.2

mother: university degree 13.5

parents own life insurance 53.9

No. of siblings 2.4

N 1228

Table 1: Descriptive statistics

Source: SOEP 2010, restricted sample

10

(school degree plus a dummy whether the respondent had some sort of postsecondary training) as

well as whether he/she is married and has children under 16 years living in the household.

Household net income is divided into quintiles is a standard normal error. The reference period

is 2010, the latest available wave of SOEP.

0Pr( )Riester X

I expect the coefficients in the baseline specification to be biased upwards. As argued in section

2, family background should be highly correlated with the costs and opportunities for buying a

Riester contract. For instance, inherited cognitive ability will not only correlate with educational

attainment (Becker, 1964) but also influence how easily information regarding Riester contracts

can be obtained and processed. In order to reduce the bias, I (1) estimate a family fixed effects

model and, (2) include proxy variables for family background. Both strategies have their

advantages and allow for different interpretations:

The first strategy exploits the idea that - at least part of - the unobserved heterogeneity is common

to members of one family. Under this assumption the difference in unobserved characteristics

should be lower within than between families. Index s identifies a sibling while f denotes the

family. The error term is split into two components, αf and εsf. Explanatory variables captured

under Xsf are assumed to be correlated with the family specific component αf , but not with the

idiosyncratic error εsf. The idiosyncratic error needs to be strictly exogenous after taking out αf.

This assumption must hold for all regressors included (Wooldridge, 2002). The fixed effects

transformation will eliminate all effects which do not vary within the same family by subtracting

the family averages (eq. 3).15

By taking differences measurement errors are amplified which

might lead to attenuation bias (Grilliches, 1977). The bias resulting from comparison across

siblings is nevertheless lower than comparing individuals across time. Moreover, standard errors

are large due to the large number of parameters that have to be estimated (Schnabel and

Schnabel, 2002, p.9). Nevertheless, the family-fixed effects model is valuable: It reflects pure

individual decisions to buy a Riester contract as opposed to coordinated family decisions by

disentangling genetic influences from individual characteristics.

0Pr sf sf f sfRiester X

Pr( ) ( )* ssf s sf s sfRiester Riester X X

In the model above the family fixed effect is treated as a nuisance parameter (Durlauf and

Ioannides, 2010, p. 465). Yet, it is interesting to study the influence of the family in a more direct

way. In an attempt to partially capture unobserved components in the error term I extend the

baseline model (eq. 1) and include proxies controlling for the ability and willingness to manage

Riester related information. More specifically, I control for mothers’ and fathers’ highest

15

Notation is analogous to Schnabel and Schnabel (2002).

(3)

(2)

(1)

11

schooling degree. In addition, I add a dummy which equals 1 if the respective parent has a

vocational degree or a college degree. These variables should capture the innate ability as well as

time preferences. Higher educated individuals are not only better equipped to handle financial

issues, but they are also known to save more in general as they are more patient (Browning and

Lusardi, 1996). As pointed in part 2, whose characteristics are more strongly correlated with their

children’s financial decisions remains unclear. In addition, I add a dummy which equals 1 if the

parents own a life insurance contract. Life insurances are the most wide-spread financial asset in

Germany (Börsch-Supan et al., 2009). On the one hand, this variable accounts for the parents’

preferences for saving, especially as most of these people coming from older cohorts did not have

to save privately to sustain adequate living standards after retirement because they could rely on

high public pensions. On the other hand side, the variable influences the extent to which children

could learn from their parents about financial matters and thereby, how easy it is for them to

overcome possible entry barriers in the Riester market.

Specific information on eligibility, subsidies and on the design of a particular Riester product

should lower entry costs even further. Therefore, a dummy variable is included which indicates

whether one of the siblings owns a Riester contract. Information advantages should result in a

higher likelihood to buy a Riester contract.16

Moreover, I control for the size of the considered

network using the number of siblings in the sample.

The added variables are endogenous to the model. It does not allow disentangling shared

preferences from whether information sharing took place. In order to partially overcome the

identification problem, I focus on sequential correlations. The underlying idea is that in t=0 no

family member owns a Riester contract. For some exogenous reasons the first sibling buys a

Riester contract in the period between t=0 and t=1. Then information sharing takes place during

the next period, lowering the entry barrier for the other siblings. In t=2 the next sibling has

bought a Riester contract until in infinity all siblings own such a private pension plan (Figure 1).

As pointed out in Manski (1993), isolating social interaction parameters is almost impossible in

the absence of full randomization. If sequential correlations are supposed to be only due to

information sharing the identification assumption requires that the factors influencing the

decision of one sibling between t and t+1 are not correlated with the decision of the other siblings

made after t+1 (Li, 2009, p.8). Unless I am willing to make the assumption above, shared

preferences might still play a role.

16

I do not consider whether parents own a Riester as this would require accounting for their eligibility. However,

some of the parents have never been eligible as they were already retired when the product was introduced.

12

Figure 1: Information sharing within the family over time

Eq. 4 represents a piecewise constant hazard function which is estimated by complementary

loglog regressions.17

contains year dummies. A discrete-time hazard model consist of (a) a

baseline risk profile over time and (b) shift parameters that capture the effect of the covariates on

the baseline hazard. The higher the hazard, the greater the risk to buy a Riester contract in a given

year. The main variable of interest is the one-period lag of whether a sibling has bought a Riester

contract.

Variation in the covariates acts to vertically shift the entire baseline hazard function. Among the

usual assumptions of linearity and homogeneity, a proportionality assumption must hold in a

simple discrete-time hazard model: Proportionality assumes that the vertical displacement in the

hazard rate per unit difference in the predictor is the same in ever year (Singer and Willet, 1993).

However, I have reason to believe that the family as a source of information has a time-varying

effect when a critical mass has been reached. Therefore interaction terms with time are included

in a further step.

0 1 1Pr( ) _ tRiester Riester Sibling X time

4. Results

I estimate a series of logistic and complementary loglog regressions, explaining the probability to

own a Riester contract. Standard errors have been adjusted for heteroskedasticity, allowing for

clustering at the level of the mother. Tables 2 and 3 report odd ratios.

Table 2 displays odd ratios for the baseline model (column 1), the family-fixed effects model

(column 2) as well a model including parental education and whether the parents own a life

insurance as proxies for family background (column 3). Column 4 extends the latter model by

controlling for contemporaneous correlations in Riester ownership between siblings.

In order to estimate the family fixed effects model the sample size is decreased from 1228 to 422

observations. The observations had to be dropped because there is no variation in the outcome

variable Riester across siblings, suggesting that shared preferences, coordinated decisions and

information sharing play a role: In 806 cases either every sibling owns a Riester by 2010 or no

17

See Singer and Willet (1993) and Jenkins (2005)

(4)

13

one does. Due to the selected sample the family fixed effects model needs to be interpreted with

caution.

In contrast to other findings (Coppola and Reil-Held, 2009, Pfarr and Schneider, 2010)

individuals who are married or have children or live in the east are not more likely to buy a

Riester contract in my sample. This might be partially due to the low average age of the sample

population which also leads to a neglect of an age effect.

Education and income are found to be important determinant for Riester ownership: Especially

individuals with a medium degree as well respondents who have some sort of postsecondary

training are more likely to buy a Riester contract in comparison to individuals with a low

schooling degree. The effects of education however turn insignificant in the family fixed effects

model. This might be partially explained by a lack of variance in educational attainment between

siblings. However, using a sample of twins Barnea et al. (2010, p. 601) find that education is

relevant for stock market participation, but it is mainly the genetic factor of education that is

important.

Overall, the coefficients do not differ much between the baseline and the proxy models which

might indicate the included proxies only captures part of the unobserved heterogeneity. However,

this is not true for the effect of income. For all models the results reveal that individuals in the

second and fourth income quintile buy Riester contracts more often than individuals at the lower

end of the income distribution. Comparison between column 1, the baseline model, and the

specifications including proxy variables shows that the coefficient for the third income quintile

becomes insignificant when controlling for parental education and the coefficient for the fourth

quintile is reduced. Tis implies that for the upper end of the income distribution much of the

observed differences in uptake rates seem to be driven by family background, while for

individuals in the lower income quintiles current own income predominates the influence of

family characteristics.

Turning to the added explanatory variables in column 3, I find that mothers’ occupational training

is not a significant determinant for Riester ownership, while fathers’ is. Individuals’ whose father

has completed vocational training or holds a college degree are more likely to buy Riester

contracts. This is opposed to the usual finding that the characteristics of the mother are stronger

determinants for the behavior of their children (Loehlin, 2005). As mentioned above, the fact that

fathers are still the main earners in families might make them role models in financial decisions.

In addition, a common finding in financial literacy literature is that men have higher financial

literacy than women (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2008). This might strengthen their position as the

person in charge of the households’ finances.

Extending the proxy model in column 4 by a further control variable, namely a dummy indicating

whether at least one of the parents own a life insurance, significantly improves the model fit as

confirmed by a likelihood ratio test for nested models. On the one hand side, the variable captures

transmitted preferences for saving from parents to their children. On the other hand, it reflects

14

whether parents are familiar with financial products and to what extent their children can learn

from them in their decision making.

Intra-generational learning between siblings might be of even more importance as siblings are

usually in the same stage of the life cycle and have therefore similar preferences and needs.

Besides that, siblings can share information and give advice to each other if one of them already

owns a Riester pension. The added variables in column 5 reveal that Riester ownership between

siblings is significantly correlated, while the size of the network does not seem to be a crucial

factor.

Riester (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

male 0.873 0.740 0.864 0.860 0.856

(0.113) (0.167) (0.113) (0.113) (0.114)

age 0.929 0.915 0.927 0.918 0.911

(0.059) (0.134) (0.060) (0.059) (0.057)

age sq. 1.001 1.001 1.001 1.001 1.001

(0.001) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)

east 0.929 0.174 0.822 0.873 0.925

(0.150) (0.220) (0.143) (0.153) (0.150)

Hauptschule ref. ref. ref. ref. ref.

Realschule 1.570** 1.871 1.435* 1.399* 1.381*

(0.243) (0.634) (0.227) (0.222) (0.216)

Abitur 0.984 1.841 0.898 0.865 0.915

(0.225) (0.949) (0.215) (0.209) (0.219)

post secondary degree 1.619* 1.370 1.608* 1.614* 1.549

(0.389) (0.720) (0.386) (0.391) (0.371)

married 1.431 1.709 1.445* 1.511* 1.508*

(0.264) (0.556) (0.269) (0.286) (0.280)

child under 16 in HH 1.217 1.212 1.228 1.245 1.239

(0.196) (0.370) (0.203) (0.208) (0.203)

income q1 ref. ref. ref. ref. ref.

income q2 1.701* 1.414 1.714* 1.691* 1.644*

(0.381) (0.536) (0.386) (0.381) (0.372)

income q3 1.560* 1.753 1.523 1.465 1.437

(0.336) (0.690) (0.332) (0.321) (0.315)

income q4 1.759** 1.820 1.702* 1.596* 1.568*

(0.362) (0.775) (0.353) (0.333) (0.324)

income q5 1.223 0.743 1.178 1.115 1.093

(0.263) (0.322) (0.257) (0.242) (0.232)

Table 2: Results after logistic regressions

15

As explained above contemporaneous correlations alone, even after controlling for all other

covariates, do not allow disentangling shared preferences from information sharing which in turn

should result in lower transaction costs when entering the market. Table 3 therefore displays

results after complementary loglog regressions, taking into account sequential correlations. The

model in column 1 includes only time dummies in order to identify a possible trend in uptake

rates. Column 2 and 3 extend the previous model by adding a lagged dummy for whether a

sibling has bought a Riester contract in the previous period (column 2). Both specifications use

the full set of independent variables from the extended model in column 5 of Table 2. As to

account for non-proportionality in the effect of the main variable of interest over time, i.e. the

mother: Hauptschule ref. ref. ref.

mother: Realschule 1.350 1.340 1.306

(0.227) (0.224) (0.199)

mother: Abitur 1.240 1.257 1.263

(0.339) (0.341) (0.319)

father: Hauptschule ref. ref. ref.

father: Realschule 0.895 0.865 0.852

(0.165) (0.159) (0.145)

father: Abitur 0.670 0.664 0.693

(0.164) (0.163) (0.160)

mother: no job training ref. ref. ref.

mother: vocational degree 1.082 1.066 1.049

(0.199) (0.195) (0.176)

mother: university degree 1.075 1.004 1.000

(0.319) (0.297) (0.276)

father: no job training ref. ref. ref.

father: vocational degree 1.713* 1.655* 1.624*

(0.37) (0.356) (0.328)

father: university degree 1.964* 1.908* 1.879*

(0.589) (0.570) (0.529)

parents own life insurance 1.456* 1.422**

(0.214) (0.190)

sibling(s) own(s) Riester 1.817**

(0.339)

No. of siblings 0.860

(0.076)

N 1228 422 1228 1228 1228

Source: SOEP 2010. Exponentiated coefficients (Odd ratios), cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses.

* (**,***), Significant at 10% (5%, 1%).

Table 2: Results after logistic regressions (cont.)

16

lagged dummy indicating whether a sibling owns a Riester contract, I include interaction terms in

column 3.

If the risk of event occurrence was independent of time the hazard function would be flat (Singer

and Willet, 1993). However, positive externalities in the form of information advantages should

help to overcome entry barriers in the Riester market and create a social multiplier (Becker and

Murphy, 2000; Glaeser et al., 2003) which in turn would result in dynamic demand for Riester

contracts. Indeed, the hazard of buying a Riester contract significantly increases with time during

the period 2004 and 2010 (column 1). There is a large increase in the hazard rate between 2004

and 2006 which is probably the result of simplification reforms kicking in. After a period of

initial enthusiasm, demand for Riester pensions flattened already shortly after introduction in

2003/04. The limited growth and public debates about the complex eligibility and subsidy

structure led to a simplification of the design in 2005, aiming at an improvement in the

acceptance of the new product by the eligible population as well as providers (Börsch-Supan et

al.,2012, p. 7). Official statistics display a dramatic increase after the legislative changes (BMAS,

2011), confirming that the complexity of the design did constitute entry barriers.

Provided that a sibling has bought a Riester contract in the previous period the likelihood of

buying a Riester pension is significantly elevated (column 2). As already suggested by the results

above information sharing among siblings takes place. Once someone within the family has

acquired knowledge on Riester products he/she will communicate this information to the rest of

the family and can give advice to the others in their decision making process (see section 2.1).

However, considering interaction terms with time shows that information sharing within the

family becomes less important over the years (column 3). While shortly after the introduction of

Riester pensions reliable information from a trusted person, such as a sibling, might have been of

particular importance in overcoming entry barriers, especially when taking into account that the

product was new and already publically criticized, the family as a source of information becomes

less crucial as the group of Riester owners in the other social circles grows. Once a critical mass

has been reached positive spillovers will create a social multiplier (Glaeser et al., 2003). As a

matter of fact, the rate of increase in Riester uptakes flattened after 2008 and some socio-

demographic strata may have already reached saturation levels (Börsch-Supan et al., 2012). The

group of low income households in turn still exhibits dynamic demand.

17

5. Conclusion

In this paper I use information on family background in order to give a reliable assessment of the

determinants of Riester ownership by considering variables that are related to decision costs and

by capturing the impact of information sharing within families.

I find that family background significantly influences the likelihood of owning a Riester pension,

in particular fathers’ occupational attainment. While it is usually the mothers’ characteristics that

are strongly correlated with the preferences and attitudes of their children, the reverse seems true

when it comes to financial decisions. In addition, if parents own a life insurance their children are

more likely to subscribe a Riester contract capturing not only transmitted preferences, but also the

extent to which children can learn from their parents’ proficiency in handling financial products.

Overall, coefficients between specifications do not differ much, apart from a model subtracting a

family fixed effect which uses a selected sample. One exception, however, is the influence of

income for certain groups. Controlling for family background in the proxy models, I conclude

that the effect of income on participation in the Riester market is lower for high income

individuals than I would have concluded in the baseline model. In the case of low income

Riester (1) (2) (3)

2004 0.0963***

(0.009)

2006 0.169*** 0.0462*** 0.0467***

(0.013) (0.040) (0.040)

2007 0.237*** 0.0585*** 0.0591***

(0.015) (0.049) (0.051)

2010 0.396*** 0.0975** 0.116*

(0.021) (0.083) (0.100)

Riester: sibling (t-1) 1.736***

(0.235)

Riester: sibling (t-1)* 2006 2.334***

(0.489)

Riester: sibling (t-1)* 2007 2.138***

(0.350)

Riester: sibling (t-1) *2010 1.248

(0.199)

Further control NO YES YES

N 5908 3035 3035

Source: SOEP 2004-2010. Exponentiated coefficients, cluster-robust standard errors in

parentheses. * (**,***), Significant at 10% (5%, 1%).

Further controls: See Table 2, column 5

Table 3: Results after cloglog regression

18

individuals own current income seems to drive the purchase decision, predominating family

characteristics. Summing up, I find that parental erudition as well as experience in financial

matters and attitude towards saving are determinants of their children’s preferences and ability in

financial decision making. However, omission either did not lead to misleading results in existing

literature on Riester pensions or, the included proxy variables only capture a small part of

unobserved heterogeneity.

The hazard of buying a Riester contract significantly increases with time during the period 2004

and 2010, with a large step-up after 2005 when simplifications to eligibility rules and product

design were introduced. The dramatic increase in uptake rates after the legislative changes,

exhibited in official statistics, can be ascribed to the lowering of entry barriers in the market.

Contemporaneous as well as sequential correlations in Riester ownership between parents and

their children as well as siblings are pronounced, even after controlling for other factors. While

the former might be due to shared preferences, I take the latter as evidence for information

sharing. However, the identification strategy does not allow isolating the pure effect coming from

social interactions and hence, results need to be interpreted with caution. Positive externalities

help to overcome entry barriers in the Riester market by dispersing information on eligibility and

the generosity of subsidies. Once a critical mass has been reached positive spillovers create a

social multiplier (Glaeser et al., 2003) which should result in dynamic demand for Riester

contracts. Indeed official statistics exhibit increasing uptake rates among low income individuals

for whom initial entry barriers were comparably high.

An optimistic interpretation of the results is that the more time elapses since the pension reforms,

the higher the coverage with private old age provisions. Combining my findings however draws

another picture: If only certain groups get in touch with information on and, hence engage in

voluntary old age provision wealth inequality might rise in the future. Already today, about one

out of four households in Germany think that they will not be able to sustain an adequate standard

of living without social assistance in the old age (Lamla, 2012). While lowering the entry barriers

for Riester pensions through further simplifications and more transparency in the market is

certainly a promising way in order to diminish the extent of old age poverty, public policy needs

to tie in with the initial step in the decision to buy any type of pension, that is the identification of

the need to provide privately for the old age. Raising awareness through better information and

educational programs is therefore of utmost priority.

19

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